


The Book of Darcy

by lforevermore



Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bastardization of Canon, Crossover, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, Multi, Siblings, Tags to be added, Threesome, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:30:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4599903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lforevermore/pseuds/lforevermore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Ann Lewis-Winchester will write her own book in the Winchester Gospels, and she will write it in fire, in blood, in sweat, and in tears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will be much longer after this prologue.
> 
> Follow at inmywildernesswriting.tumblr.com

Darcy Ann Lewis is never supposed to be a permanent member of the Winchester family.

She is a year old when John Winchester breaks her nursery door down. Her mother is dead in the hallway, one hand outstretched as though she were reaching for the doorknob. Her father had never even made it up the stairs. She screams and wails as John Winchester fires a blast of rock salt at the figure that hovers beside her crib, and continues her panicked cries as he scoops her up and sprints downstairs, taking them two at a time.

The front door slams just as he reaches it. The figure reappears only feet from John, the twisted likeness of a woman dressed in rags and covered in blood. John lifts the shotgun again, only to have it wrenched from his hand by seemingly nothing at all. That same invisible force slams him against the closed door, pinning him there.

The spirit advances on him, bony hand reaching not for him, but for the little girl in his arms. She screams even louder, this time crowding into John’s hold instead of trying to squirm away.

“Hush, child,” the spirit says, sibilant and chilling. Just as the hand touched the girl’s pink pajamas, the ghost screams, and vanishes as flames licked at her body.

The force releases John and he breathes, leaning heavily on the door. He shushes her, trying to soothe her. “See? It’s alright. Bobby came through, even if he cut it really fuckin’ close.”

He means to take her to the hospital, safety pin a note to her with her name and her nearest living relative, drop her off and never see her again. Except then the police are on his tail, and so he has to buy another baby seat, puts her in the back where Sam usually falls asleep in the car. And somehow, two months later, John Winchester has acquired a little girl.

“You can’t just drop her off now,” Bobby says over the phone. “You’re in Maine. People are gonna wonder how a little girl got all the way from Mississippi to Maine. And I don’t recommend you cross back into Mississippi for a while yet.”

John glances from the payphone to where Dean, eight years old, is coming out of the gas station bathroom with a diaper bag John had bought from a Goodwill store. He’s holding Sammy’s hand and carrying Darcy, a blanket protecting her from the wind.

“What the hell do I do with a girl?” John demands.

“The best you can, I guess,” Bobby says, and hangs up on him.


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy dreams of fire. She dreams of screams and meat hooks, of blood and gore. She dreams of black eyes, no whites, no irises, just black like the starless night sky. She dreams of Dean, screaming her name and Sam's.  
  
She jolts awake. The room is dark but for the lights of New York shining through the windows and the soft glow of the alarm clock beside the bed. Her breathing breaks the quiet of the bedroom, harsh in the still night. She kicks the covers off, too tight and constricting, sliding out of the bed and heading for the adjoined bathroom. The light comes on as she enters, dims to be easier on her eyes, bless Jarvis. She soaks a washcloth with cold water and presses it to her face, breathing deep.  
  
Dean is dead, beyond help now. Sam has fallen off the radar, won't answer his phone even though she sometimes still calls out of habit or desperation. She knows he’s still alive through Bobby, but beyond that, she hasn’t the faintest clue to his whereabouts or habits.  
  
Darcy is alone.

“Shall I start the shower for you, Miss Lewis?” Jarvis asks. Not so alone, then, even if she’s not sure an AI in the middle of the night counts.

“No, no,” she says. “It’ll wake me up too much.” It’s ridiculous to use that excuse still – there’s plenty of hot water to go around now, but she still can’t shake the unease at the idea of wasting it on an extra shower in the middle of the night. “I’m just gonna… I need tea or something. A snack.”

“Of course, Miss Lewis,” Jarvis replies, ever the polite gentleman.

Jarvis is great – he’s the perfect man, Darcy decides, just as she does every time she talks to the AI. He doesn’t say a thing about her weird-looking traps drawn onto the carpet or the salt lines on the doors and windows. He doesn’t mention the silver knife that she keeps tucked down beside her mattress. Thor’s mentioned it only once, back when they were in New Mexico, and Jane just doesn’t ask questions. Still, silently judgy is Jane’s schtick, not Jarvis’.

Darcy locks the door behind her and heads to the kitchen on the floor of suites. She’s just sat down at the table with a steaming cup of tea and her tablet when Thor comes walking in, hair mussed from sleep and all godlike in his bunny pajamas.

Seriously, Darcy has no clue how a guy in bunny pajamas could look so much like he belonged on the cover of GQ. Actually, he’s been on the cover before. What was another manly magazine?

“You are awake very early,” Thor observes, grabbing a loaf of bread, apparently because it was the closest thing. He sits down across from her and starts in – Darcy hopes that there was another loaf somewhere, or no one will be able to have a sandwich for days.

“I’m nocturnal sometimes,” Darcy replies, glancing at the clock on her tablet and, whoa, it’s three in the morning. She pulls up the local news and begins scrolling through to the obituaries.

“Have you a new job?” he asks.                                                               

Thor is the only one who knows about Darcy’s little side business. He’s known from the moment that they had met, called her a Guardian of the realm. At the time, Darcy hadn’t been hunting, content to pass it off to whoever came through. Of course, that was after the big blowout that was her father telling Dean that Darcy could go to school. Darcy hadn’t been there, but from what she understood, Dean had _not_ been okay with the fact that Dad encouraged Darcy to go to school while issuing Sam an ultimatum, demanding he stay gone. Dean had blamed Darcy in the long run, and well, that had always been between them over the past few years. Now, she regretted it, but that was life, she supposed. Her brother was in Hell, and Darcy had never apologized.

Since the whole yellow-eyed demon thing, though, since Dad had died and Dean had sold his soul, Darcy’s been hunting again. She’s always felt responsible for the people around her though, living their normal lives without a worry about what was really hiding in the night shadows. Now, since the Battle of New York, she’s just given up on pretending and started hunting around the city.

Violent death brings on ghosts, and there had been a lot of those in the battle. The fear and doubt that came with the impossible happening opens them up to demonic possession. The body count had been a siren’s call for pretty much anything supernatural that cared to listen. New York had been ripe for the taking.

“I’m trying not to draw attention to myself after the last one. So not yet,” she says. “Just bad dreams keeping me up, so I figured that I would see if there was anything to take care of.”

“I have often thought that if I could slay the beast, the nightmare would end,” Thor says. “But I have learned that it is not possible to slay some beasts.”

Darcy glances up at him. “Yeah, well. If it can touch me, I can kill it. Nightmares aren’t tangible.” She returns her gaze to the obituaries, zooming in and focusing on one in particular. Abigail Williams, aged twenty-two, died in her sleep from medical complications not yet determined – that practically screamed suspicious, right there, especially coupled with the fact that she apparently had no history of medical problems. Sudden, tragic, and mysterious, right up Darcy’s alley. “Sorry, L’oreal, I have to work,” she says, pushing back from the table and standing.

“If you need any help, you need only ask,” Thor replies before going back to demolishing the loaf of bread.

 

Darcy’s room is quiet. She is careful not to disturb the thin salt lines that she has across the door in an arc, checking it as she steps over it. She checks the lines on the window before locking the door behind her and looking up at the ceiling, where she has painstakingly drawn a Devil’s Trap under a series of posters. Yeah, she can’t take advantage of the Tower’s cleaning services or bring anyone but Jane and Thor back to her room, but she at least knows that she is as safe as she can be.

Keeping a low profile when you live with the Avengers is surprisingly easy. They’re all so wrapped up in themselves and in each other – Steve in his long-lost friend (and Darcy mourns the loss of _that_ ship sailing right there), Clint and Natasha in each other, Tony in his robots, and Bruce in his manly angst. Phil Coulson is even too preoccupied to notice Darcy’s moonlighting, what with coming back from the dead and all.

Darcy keeps her door locked and her protections low in the Tower, relies on the little bit of witchcraft she’s picked up over the years to protect her instead of traps. Her apartment in the city, however, is a completely different story – there she’s armed to the teeth, god help any burglars that dare trespass. She does keep a go-bag in the bottom of her closet and in her little Jeep, a just-in-case that she can’t shake after years of living on the road and on the run.

“Sorry to wake you, Jarvis,” she says as the lights came on.

“I have already finished my updates for the night.” Jarvis’ crisp voice comes through, and Darcy smiles. “I am fully ready to assist you, Miss Lewis.”

“Thanks. Can you pull up that article I saved, as well as any that might have any relation? Sort by cause of death, please.”

Darcy pulls her hair back as Jarvis worked, settling down on the bed and spreading out a towel to clean her shotgun. If she’s going to be working, she wants her weapons in working order, that was for damn sure.

 _“Take care of your guns, Darce, and they’ll take care of you,”_ Dean says in her mind, gives her hands pause before she carries on.

There are only a few projections that come up, the original article as well as a few older ones. There is one that catches her eye, and she pokes at it. It zooms in.

Brian Williams, twenty-seven, died in his sleep from medical complications a year earlier, leaving behind a grieving mother and sister – named Abigail. Well. That’s certainly suspicious.

“Jarvis, can you get me these autopsy files and death certificates?” Darcy asks.

“Certainly, Miss Lewis.”

Well. Darcy’s weekend has just filled up.

 

“You said you’re from Abby’s school?” Marjorie Williams definitely looks like a grieving mother, haggard and red-eyed when she opens the door to let Darcy in. “I don’t understand why they’d want to do an article on this…”

“Abby was very well-known and friends with a lot of people,” Darcy says quickly. “And really, we’re just trying to honor her the way we know how, and her friends thought that this would be the best way to help people celebrate her life instead of mourning her death.” She adds a sympathetic smile, taking the tea that Marjorie had offered. “I understand this is difficult, but I just have a few questions.”

Marjorie nods, holding a couch pillow to herself.

Darcy takes out a notebook, flipping it open both to take notes and to really sell the student journalism idea. “Were you aware that Abby had any sort of health problem?”

Marjorie shakes her head. “The doctor said… they said that it was _spontaneous_ pneumothorax… her lungs just collapsed without cause.”

That’s definitely stretching it, considering that Abigail’s ribcage had been crushed. “So there was no warning? Abby didn’t complain of any pain or anything the days before?”

The woman shakes her head again, sniffling a little. “No, no… she’d started having nightmares, but the doctors say that probably wasn’t related.”

Darcy jots a note or two down. Nightmares and supernatural beings have been linked before, people usually mistaking ghosts for figments of their imagination. “Now… Abby had a brother that died last year, right?”

Marjorie lets out a sob. Darcy tries not to feel guilty; she’s trying to help the only way she could, after all. “Yes, Brian… He died of the same… the same thing!” She reaches for a tissue. Darcy gives her some time to compose herself and lets the tears subside. “I’m sorry, I just… they were my children… They, um. They said that there may be a genetic link between… between…”

Marjorie collapses into sobs again, and Darcy puts the notebook away. She won’t be getting any more information from the poor woman. When the sobs subside once more, Darcy gives her the best Sam expression she can muster.

“You have a beautiful home, Ms. Williams,” Darcy says. “When was it built?”

“The early thirties,” Marjorie says. “It’s been in my family for three generations.”

“Old houses can have a lot of problems. My mom’s has a lot of wiring trouble, drafts coming in, that sort of thing.” Darcy smiles politely. “Do you have any problems like that?”

Marjorie sniffles and nods, wiping her nose. “Yes… especially recently… With the funeral costs, I don’t know…” She sighs, looking around. “There are just so many ghosts in this old place, you know?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Darcy says, and is sure that Marjorie doesn’t know the half of it.

 

Tony Stark is in her living room. “And where have _you_ been?”

"Just out with some friends," Darcy replies. Alright, technically it isn’t her living room, but the floor's living room. Still, considering that she was pretty much the only one who ever uses it, it might as well be.

"Dressed like that? You look like you've just been to a funeral. What's with the... business casual?" Tony eyes her. "Not that the blazer isn't flattering, it's very flattering, I promise. I can't take my eyes off it." Which means he’s looking at her boobs. Normally, Darcy would respond with something equally lascivious, but today she has things to do and ghosts to gank.

"Is there a reason you're sitting on my couch?"

"Technically, it's my couch," Tony says. "The whole Tower is technically mine. Including my AI."

"I thought it was twelve percent Pepper's."

Tony pauses. "...Never gonna live that one down. Don't distract me. Let's stop talking about me and start talking about you, dear Darcy. For example, let's talk about the fact that you routinely use my AI to break into the NYPD database."

Darcy stops in the middle of the living room, on her way to a comfy looking chair. She looks at him over her shoulder. Shit. "Don't you do that every Thursday for kicks?"

"No, it's not much of a challenge for me," Tony replies. "And, with my technology, it's not much of a challenge for you. And since it's my technology, I'd like to know why you're using it for such nefarious purposes."

"You use it for nefarious purposes all the time."

"Ah, ah, ah! This isn't about me, this is all about you." Tony spreads his arms. "Come on, this is a safe space."

Darcy rolls her eyes. She’s been using the banter to think of something to explain this all away, and she only has one. "If you have to know, I've been keeping an eye on my brother's case file."

"You're lying." Tony grins. "Ask me how I know you're lying."

"How do you know I'm lying, Tony," Darcy deadpans.

"Because I have your SHIELD file." Tony waves the tablet on his lap, still grinning. His fingers fly across the screen as he pulls something up. "Darcy Ann Lewis-Winchester," he reads, and Darcy's heart stops. "Consultant. Clearance level five." He looks up at her. "Your clearance level is even higher than my official one, though I have no clue why they even bother, considering I'm just gonna break in and get whatever I want to know."

"I had no idea," Darcy manages. "I don't know anything about this." Her mind is racing. They know who she is. How long have they known? How is she still walking free? How long will it be before they drag her in and demand to know where her brothers are? "Excuse me, I really... I need to get out of these shoes."

She leaves Tony in the living room, slams the door to her room and locking it behind her. She kicks off her shoes and yanks her skirt down in a smooth motion, grabbing a pair of jeans off the floor. She pulls a duffel out of her closet, throwing everything she could see in, her journal, the silver knife between the mattress and the bedframe, the gun underneath her pillow. As a second thought, she shoves the gun into the back waistband of her pants and grabs a flannel to cover it, shoving a few changes of clothes in the bag.

When she emerges from the room, Tony is still on her couch. He frowns, taking in her appearance. "You're leaving again?"

"Going to the gym," she lies easily. "The one down by the coffee shop. See you later."

Darcy has gone to ground before, has evaded the FBI and the CIA, has hidden from Child Protective Services. SHIELD is a hell of a lot scarier, but she’ll be damned if she’s just going to sit around. What she needs to do is get to the apartment she keeps downtown, get her car and her weapons, and get the hell out before they realize she’s gone.

The elevator ride down is excruciating. She bounces like crazy, not even waving at the security guards that open the door for her, hailing a cab instead of the car they offered to call for her.

Darcy gives the driver the address, sure that she looks scared and hunted. "There's an extra fifty in it for you if you get me there in ten minutes or less, no questions asked."

His eyebrows hit his hairline, and he guns it.

She digs out her cell phone, the old flip phone that she keeps on hand instead of the Stark phone. The Stark phone she’ll leave in the cab, hopefully drawing the feds away for at least a little while. No doubt they’ll be tracking the GPS that Darcy is certain Stark has installed. She hit a number, waiting impatiently for a familiar, gruff answer.

"I'm on my way to you," she says quickly and hung up. Bobby will understand, she thinks, and will hopefully text directions to a safe house or something. She doesn’t want to give away too much information if SHIELD questioned the taxi driver later.

Nine minutes later, they pull up to her apartment building. Darcy grabs two fifties out of her emergency fund and passes them up to him, sliding out of the cab and glancing around. No suspicious looking suits, no black cars pulling up with sirens wailing and lights flashing. So far, so good.

She takes the stairs two at a time - the elevator has been broken since the day she had gotten the place and no one has gotten around to fixing it yet - and unlocks the door, quickly locking them behind her. Her car is parked in the garage next door, so if worse comes to worst, she can scale the fire escape.

Her apartment isn’t the classiest place, that’s for damn sure. It’s a mishmash of furniture she’d found on the sidewalk and at Goodwill, enough to make it comfortable enough if she has to stay in it for any length of time. There’s canned food in the pantry and enough rock salt to clear out a score of ghosts, as well as jugs of holy water. She bypasses both of them in favor of yanking drawers open, throwing guns and knives into her duffle as fast as she can. It was small, luckily, and she yanks the bedroom closet open to grab the rosaries hanging on a hook inside, as well as a couple of shotguns and the machete she keeps in the back of it. Ammo comes next, shoves it into a pocket on the side.

Someone bangs on the door. “Miss Lewis, open up!”

“Shit!” Darcy swears, slamming the closet closed and yanking the bedroom window open. She vaults outside, sliding down the fire escape stairs for the six stories it takes her to reach the ground. She doesn’t look back as she runs for the garage next door – she just has to get to the car and get the hell out of town.

The duffle is heavy and unwieldy as she ran, but this isn’t Darcy’s first rodeo, not by a long shot. She slips into the garage, dodging between cars until she finds hers, a Jeep that she bought in New Mexico. She glances around, is relieved to see that she hadn’t been followed, and tosses the duffle in the back. Darcy slides into the driver’s seat and turns the key.

The Jeep doesn’t start. It doesn’t even click. She tries it twice more before the passenger’s door opens, and none other than Phil Coulson slid into the seat beside her.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Darcy glares at him. “What the hell did you do to my car?”

“I only disconnected the battery cables,” he says. He’s wearing a suit, of course, and that bland smile he always has. Darcy isn’t fooled – she’s pretty sure people see that smile before they die. “It won’t hurt your car in the long run.”

Not that it’ll matter – Darcy’s pretty sure she won’t be seeing the outside world for a while after this. “So, do I get to walk into interrogation under my own power, or is the Batcave secret and do you have to blindfold me?”

Coulson just continues smiling. “There will be no interrogation, Miss Winchester,” he says, and then pauses. “You _did_ see the file, correct?”

“Yeah, Tony showed it to me. How long have you known? If I’m allowed to ask questions, that is.”

“We only recently put the pieces together,” Coulson says. “At first we were unsure if we were correct, considering your stature and background, but after watching you work…”

“You _watched_ me?” Darcy snaps. “Christ. And the fuck you mean my ‘stature’? Is that some misogynistic way of saying you’re surprised I’m a chick?”

Coulson’s smile actually drops a little. “It’s statistically unlikely – the hunting profession is primarily men. We mean nothing against you, of course, we just had to be sure.” He clears his throat, and that unassuming smile returns. “Now, if you’ll come with me.”

The back door opens. Darcy squawks as another suit reaches in and grabs her duffle bag, while yet another opens her door and waits patiently for her to step out of the Jeep. She grits her teeth and does so; it doesn’t look like she has much of a choice.

Instead of slapping handcuffs on her, however, they simply lead her to another car, a nondescript black vehicle, and hold a door open for her. Coulson slides into the seat beside her, pulling out his tablet.

All in all, it’s a pretty damn awkward drive. Darcy doesn’t speak, too concerned that she might say something to incriminate herself – she has Fifth Amendment rights, damn it, Sam has drilled that into her. If they operate under normal law enforcement procedure, they can’t hold her for longer than forty-eight hours unless they charge her with something, and considering that they have yet to read her the rights, she isn’t sure exactly what she’s getting charged with. Hopefully it’ll just be a fucking long interrogation, and Darcy can be well away from New York by the end of the week.

She’ll miss Jane and Thor. She’ll miss staring at Steve’s abs.

Darcy zones out. By the time they reach SHIELD, it’s been a good forty-five minute drive, and she’s antsy. She bounces her knee, tapping on the car door, but Coulson continues to ignore her just as he has been, apparently answering emails or playing Angry Birds or something. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t particularly care.

The door opens, pulling her out of her reverie. Darcy steps out of the car, looking around – she was on a freakin’ compound, like something out of a dystopian movie. She’ll have to revise her earlier legal assessment, now pretty damn certain that SHIELD won’t be operating under normal law enforcement procedure.

“This way, please,” Coulson says, perfectly polite, and leads her into a building. They step into an elevator, starting a ride that was even more awkward than the car, complete with elevator music versions of current songs, all of which made Darcy want to rip her ears off. Maybe this is a torture technique or something.

The room that Coulson leads her to is, surprisingly, not a cell. It isn’t an interrogation room, either, at least not one that Darcy has ever seen (and she’s seen a few in her day). It’s an office, complete with desk, computer, a fake potted plant, and a rather comfortable looking couch against the wall. Coulson closes the door behind her, stepping around the desk to take a seat in the chair. He motions for her to take a seat in the chair across from him.

“I don’t know where they are,” she says, which was kind of a lie, considering that she knows Dean’s in freaking Hell. “I honestly can’t tell you anything.”

“This isn’t about your brothers, Miss Winchester,” Coulson says. “This is about you, and the work you’re doing. Ultimately, you’re just here to listen to our sales pitch.”

Darcy stops, confused. “…Sales pitch?”

Coulson studies her for a moment. “Miss Winchester, did you stop to think about what the term ‘consultant’ meant?”

It dawns on her then. No, that can’t be right. “Wait. _Wait_. You’re offering me a _job_?”

“SHIELD has always dealt with the strange and the unknown,” Coulson says. “I can assure you, the things you deal with on a regular basis qualify as the strange and the unknown.”

“If it’s up your alley, why don’t you have agents who take care of this?” Darcy asks. “Why are you talking to _me_ about this?”

“There are a few reasons for that,” Coulson says. “For one thing, agents have to operate within certain parameters. Hunters, however, are versatile, proficient and flexible in ways that we as trained agents cannot usually afford to be. They blend in. They – _you_ have experience with weapons and enemies that we as an agency have not faced. SHIELD can handle gods. We can handle megalomaniacs. We can coordinate seamless and silent government takeovers in first world countries without the public ever knowing.”

“That’s fuckin’ terrifying, and I’ve faced down a demon siege,” Darcy mutters, staring at Coulson.

There’s a twitch of his lips into a more real smile. “I haven’t. We need people like you, hunters like you, on our radar, to handle the things that our agents can’t.”

Darcy drums her fingers on the armrest of the chair, watching Coulson carefully. “And what would you want me to do?”

“Exactly what you _are_ doing. Working jobs, keeping people safe,” Coulson says. “We would ask that you begin compiling a database of creatures you’re familiar with, the signs of them, how to kill them. Eventually, there is a possibility that we would ask you to begin training a select group of agents as hunters.”

“That’s asking a lot of me,” Darcy says, eyeing him. “And what do I get out of it?”

“For one thing, legal immunity of anything related to hunting.”

“Really?” Darcy snorts. “Grave desecration, impersonating a law enforcement officer, murder in the first?”

“As long as it has a direct relation to the case at hand, SHIELD can and will make those charges disappear,” Coulson says. “As it is, we have already cleared all of your past charges.”

“That was nice of you, thanks,” Darcy says, genuinely surprised. This is officially the nicest interrogation she’s ever gotten. Certainly the best job offer.

Coulson’s lip twitches again. “We can also offer equipment, with the proper requisition forms, and funding, as well as manpower.”

“Manpower? No, no way in hell.” Darcy snorts. “Hunting is kind of a lone wolf thing, and you don’t take inexperienced hunters out with you until you’re damn sure they’re not going to get you killed.”

Coulson raises an eyebrow. “You hunted with your brothers.”

“Yeah, well. They’re family, and family’s different.”

“The offer still stands,” Coulson says, and moves right along. “We would occasionally pass cases your way that seem to be more your area of expertise.”

“And if I don’t take up your job offer? What happens then?” Darcy asks. She doesn’t want to end up in prison or disappear into the good night or whatever.

“Then you continue working out of your apartment while getting funding from hustling pool and credit card scams,” Coulson said blandly.

The thing was.

The thing was that if Dean were here, in this position, he would say hell no and walk away without looking back. He would think that it’s ludicrous – they’re not superheroes, they’re not secret agents, they’re criminals and liars and thieves, who work in the dark to keep the light pure (okay, maybe that’s a little bit of Sam too). The point is, her brothers would literally shit a brick, and Darcy isn’t sure she can go against Dean’s memory just yet.

“I don’t think…” She pauses. “This isn’t how hunting works. You can’t slap an LLC on it.”

“Take some time,” Coulson says, not unkindly. “Think about it. The offer will be here when you’re ready.”

 

They deliver Darcy back to her car and leave her alone. One of them hands her the Stark phone she’d left in cab, and she stares at it for a minute – two missed calls from Tony and three from Jane. She slides it into her pocket and sets to work on her Jeep, reconnecting the battery cables, and then checking the oil for the hell of it.

After that, she sets about detailing it too, cleans out all the trash she’s collected over the months, wipes down everything. It’s calming, methodical, makes her feel like Dean’s watching her and giving her tips on how to better care for her car, like he could be sitting in the passenger seat beside her, with Sam reading in the backseat.

_“Ease into it,” Dean says. She’s fourteen and behind the wheel of his Impala, terrified and driving in circles in a field. “Feel the car, make it like an extension of you.”_

_“Just like your gun, Darce,” Sam pipes up from the backseat._

_Darcy breathes and does as they say, eases into it carefully and with a clear mind. Soon, her shaky circles are more steady, and Dean’s clapping a hand on her shoulder._

_“Wanna take her on the road?” he asks, and she smiles._

Darcy blinks out of the memory, rubs her hands over the steering wheel of the Jeep. Her brothers aren’t here – she’s twenty-two, not fourteen, and she’s alone.

The phone rings – the flip phone, not the Stark phone. She answers it without thinking about it, programmed into always answering that phone.

“Everything alright?” Bobby asks – he sounds worried, like he’s not sure if he should be heading up to bail her out of jail again or not.

“False alarm,” she says. “Thought I was someone else.”

“Uhuh, listen.” Bobby moves right along. “There’s something you need to know – “

“I can’t talk right now, Bobby,” Darcy says. Her throat is tight – he makes her think of Sam and Dean, and the feeling of homesickness is welling up in her chest. “I’ll call you back.”

She hangs up on him, will feel bad about it later. She stares at the phone in her hands for a moment before she’s punching a speed dial, fingers doing the thinking for her.

“You’ve reached Sam Winchester,” the phone says. “I can’t come to the phone right now – leave a message with your number and I’ll get back to you.”

There’s a beep. Darcy swallows. “Hey, Sammy,” she says. “Sorry, Sam. Listen, I just… Things are confusing, and… Never mind. Sorry to bug you.”

She hangs up, and leans her head on the steering wheel. After a moment of breathing and fighting back half-angry, half-homesick tears, she turns the key in the ignition, and pulls out of the parking garage. She ignores the phone as she drives – the Stark one, of course, not the flip phone – and gets out on the highway just to cruise.

It feels as close to home as she can get.

 

She finally answers her phone when she pulls back into the garage at half past six. It’s Jane, not Tony, or she wouldn’t have bothered, not really in the mood to answer questions about her quote-unquote consultant status.

“Where have you been all day?” Jane demands in lieu of a hello. “Tony says you went to the gym hours ago. Are you working?”

“Long workout,” Darcy replies – it’s evasive, they both know it is, but they’ve had more than one discussion about how the less Jane knows about her moonlighting, the better for them both. “Had to blow off some steam. What’s up?”

“We’re going out tonight.”

“We are?” It doesn’t sound particularly appealing, quite honestly. Darcy has a lot on her plate – Coulson, homesick, job. “I don’t know, Jane, you know I don’t drink when I’m working.”

“I can make it so you want to,” Jane says. “I can make you an offer that you can’t refuse.”

“Oh god,” Darcy groans. “No, don’t do this to me, Janey.”

She can _hear_ Jane’s grin through the phone. “Bucky convinced Steve to come out with us.”

Darcy drops her head against the steering wheel. “God damn it. Fine.”

 

The thing is, Darcy has not only one, but _two_ life-destroying crushes.

The first one is pretty obvious. Anyone with eyes can see that she’s got a thing for Steve Rogers. Who the hell _wouldn’t_ have a thing for Captain America? He’s _perfect_ in ways that even Jarvis can’t be (to be honest, though, if Jarvis were a man she’d marry him in a heartbeat). He’s a good guy, through and through, with just a little sliver of darkness that keeps him balanced – she’d seen it, they’d all seen it, in the gym and in the field. She wants to make him _lose his mind_ in bed, and then she wants to watch him make pancakes naked in the morning. She wants to do domestic things with him, like shop at IKEA and pet puppies and drive around on his sexy as hell motorbike. She wants to reach up and grab his dog-tags from his naked chest with her _teeth._

Then there’s her deep, dark crush on one Sergeant James Barnes. There’s a thing there, she thinks, more-so than with Steve – she barely knows Steve, can barely get past her star-struck celebrity-level crush to get to know him as a person. Her relationship with Bucky is mostly banter, back and forth sexual innuendo that she loves. He’s just as lecherous as Tony, but smoother about it – knows how to give a girl a compliment, that’s for damn sure. She’s careful with him sometimes, understands the haunted look in his eyes, and she thinks that he gets that she has skeletons (literal dead bodies, yeesh) in her metaphorical closet. Darcy has an unshakeable feeling that if she crawled into bed with Bucky, he wouldn’t be one to let her leave without absolutely _ruining_ her first.

But neither of them will ever be a thing that happens for her, for a multitude of reasons. For one, she’s just an intern to them – just a little girl in a grown-up world, barely hanging on for dear life. They’re practically on different planes of existence. For another, she’s pretty sure there’s some sexual tension between them, and Darcy is a lot of things, but she is not a homewrecker. And last but not least, there’s the fact that she has a crush on _both of them_. She can’t in good conscience date one and lust after the other. She can’t sleep her way through them and still call them friends after, either, it doesn’t work like that, she’s learned.

Hell, falling into Jane’s bed years ago nearly ruined their friendship. Darcy doesn’t need to learn a lesson more than once.

So really, going out with them is like hell. But the self-imposed kind, which is… better?

Darcy spends entirely too long picking out clothes for just going out to a bar. In the end, she settles for a tank top that shows her ladies off (what shirt doesn’t, though, let’s be honest) with a flannel thrown over it. She still feels a little homesick, enough that she wants something tangible of who she really is, and the flannel is perfect – lowkey, trashy-chic, as a girl in college used to call it. Jeans and sneakers complete the look, and she just pulls back her hair into a ponytail, lets her bangs frame her face, and throws some lipstick on. After a moment’s thought, she abandons the idea of taking weapons with her, sticks with her pocket knife and decides to rely on the fact that she’ll be out and about with two trained assassins, two super-soldiers, a literal god, and her bestie, who will totally kick some ass if she needs to.

So when she steps into the elevator to see the two afore-mentioned super-soldiers, all casually hot like they don’t even _try_ – and Darcy’s not sure that they do – she feels a little underdressed. That is very quickly remedied by Barnes leveling a wink her way and whistling, as he is wont to do. Steve is much more polite, which is almost _worse_ , simply greeting her with a smile and her name.

“My night’s already lookin’ up,” Barnes says, leans against the walls with his hands in his pockets. He looks like he walked out of some ‘50s novel, white t-shirt and jeans with his hair pulled back into a little ponytail. “Doll, you are a sight for sore eyes.”

“Keep ‘em coming, Barnes, make me feel like a queen,” Darcy says with a grin. She can’t help the hint of color that rises to her cheeks.

“You two haven’t even had anything to drink,” Steve says – he’s blushing too, it’s adorable. Darcy wants to see how low that red goes.

“Don’t worry, Stevie, you’re pretty too,” Barnes replies.

“I’m sure you’d look gorgeous in eyeliner and lipstick,” Darcy adds. “I’ll lend you mine sometime.”

Steve’s blush deepens, but he’s smiling. “I’m not sure you have my colors, Darcy.”

Darcy laughs. It’s going to be a good night.


	4. Chapter 4

She doesn’t drink – she’s still on a job, still likes to keep her wits about her even if she’s not technically working right then. She _needs_ to be, don’t get her wrong, but it’s hard, hunting is _hard_ without her brothers. Before, she was an extra hand, playing second fiddle to Dean’s muscle and Sam’s brains, but now she’s got to somehow be them both, be smart enough to figure it out and strong enough to take it out. It’s a heavy burden, she’ll admit, one weighed down even more by grief and fear.

It’s no excuse.

 

The bar that they go to is something like a high-class dive – discreet enough that there are no real paparazzi waiting to get a picture of Natasha Romanov’s sordid affairs with the men of the Avengers, but still laid back and easy. Darcy doesn’t feel too out of place in her flannel, even though she’s sure that she always looks like she just rolled out of bed when she stands next to Jane or Natasha. It’s not that she’s not gorgeous – because she _is_ , she knows she is, she’s just… not classy? She’s too rough around the edges to be classy. She’s the kind of girl that you buy a beer and use a line on, not the kind of girl that you take out to a fancy restaurant to wine and dine. And she’s okay with that, really – she doesn’t need that, she’s _happy_ with herself.

Except for the part where Steve Rogers is totally a wine-and-dine kind of guy, but that’s beside the point. Bucky Barnes is more her speed, she thinks, but still _way_ out of her league.

The _point_ is that she’s torturing herself by going out with them, but she can’t help it. She’s a masochist, head over heels in puppy love like she’s back in high school (that one year they stayed long enough for her to give a rat’s ass about anyone else, that is).

“Not drinking tonight?” Clint asks her when she sits back down at the table with a soda instead of a beer. “Lewis. _Lewis_ , I’m so disappointed.”

“No bad karaoke for you tonight,” Darcy says. She doesn’t elaborate, even though he obviously wants to pry. “You’ll have to sing for me.”

“At least tell me you’ll play darts with me,” he tries, and she laughs. There are three people in the world who have a _chance_ at beating her at darts, and Clint is easily one of them.

“No way in hell, Hotshot,” she replies.

Jane sits down, then, a girly drink in hand. “I told the bartender to put whatever you ordered on my tab,” she says to Darcy. It’s nothing new – Jane picks up the drinks whenever she drags Darcy out places, understands that Darcy has a limited fund that she can pull from. They’ve started considering it part of her salary. Technically, since they both work for Stark now, she thinks that Tony should pick up the tab, but he’s got this thing where he throws around money and it makes her nervous.

“Just soda for Darcy,” Clint says with a sigh. “Because she _hates_ us.”

“No singing?” Natasha asks, sliding into her chair gracefully.

“For Christ’s sake,” Darcy groans.

“You know all of Led Zeppelin! Literally every song!” Clint throws his hands up. “It’s impressive!”

“No Zeppelin,” Darcy says, a little lower than she intended. Her heart hurts at the very idea, has to change the station when she’s sober or she tears up.

Thor, Steve, and Bucky finally make their way over to the table, sitting down. Steve looks surprisingly in place, actually, like he’s comfortable in a bar setting, which… Apple-pie, all-American, homegrown hunk of a man is pretty much Darcy’s kryptonite. He’s got a beer, even though he can’t get drunk. He notices her looking and shrugs, cheeks not even going scarlet like she expected them to. “I like the taste,” he says.

“I can approve of that,” she replies.

Add to the picture the broody bad boy beside him, and stick a fork in her, Darcy is done for.

The night progresses. She kicks back with the super-soldiers, watches Jane get progressively drunker, leaning on Thor and giggling while the god smiles fondly at her. Clint takes Natasha for a spin around the dance floor, and the pair of them are breathtakingly graceful in an odd sort of way. She’s all curves and sleek lines, while he’s almost as rough as Darcy’s soul, and the pair of them dancing is a sight to see. She watches them, along with Bucky and Steve.

It’s then that she notices there’s something like wistfulness on both of their faces – Bucky staring at Natasha and Steve staring into his past, or something equally deep. Before she can shake them out of it, though, with a dirty joke or an invitation to pool, there’s a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey, honey,” someone says. The hand slides down her back, uninvited and _certainly_ unwelcome. “How about a dance?”

Darcy can be civil. Darcy can be polite. She turns, plucks the hand away by the wrist, and gives the offending asshole a withering smile. “No, thank you,” is all she says, and she turns back to Steve and Bucky. They’re certainly shaken out of their reverie now, both of them leaning back, arms crossed, unimpressed looks on their faces.

The hand flicks her hair away from her face, and Darcy resists the urge to break it. “Now, it ain’t nice to shoot a man down like that. How about you give me a chance?”

Darcy grits her teeth, this time grabbing the man’s wrist and turning fully in her seat to face him. “How about you keep your fucking hands to yourself?”

The music’s still playing, but Jane is sitting up now, glaring at the guy, and Natasha and Clint are making their way over from the dance floor. They’re closing rank around her, how sweet.

It’s _frustrating_ , because Darcy can handle herself, and has for a long time.

“I’m bein’ real sweet to you, sweetheart,” the man says, all teeth and entitlement. “Doesn’t look like anyone here’s showin’ you a good time, so you aren’t taken.” He grabs her arm, and Bucky stands up.

Darcy holds out a hand to stop him, jerks her arm away from the asshole, and is struck by a sudden idea. “I’ll tell you what,” she says, suddenly all sugar and sweet smile. “Let’s make a bet. See that pool table over there?” She points. “I was pretty good back in the day. You beat me at pool, you can have a dance. You lose, you get the hell out of my sight.”

The man grins like he’s got her in the bag now. Steve looks alarmed, and Bucky looks annoyed, like he still wants to physically remove the guy from the bar. Thor and Jane, however, are both settling, as is Clint. Natasha’s face is impassive, no expression showing.

There are three people in the world who can beat her at pool. One of them is a fucking superhero, one of them is in the wind, and one of them is dead. This asshole doesn’t even register.

 

Darcy can see him realize that he’s in trouble about ten minutes into the game. He can’t back out though, lest he look like a wimp in front of his friends, so Darcy has him right where she wants him - his misogynistic ass being humiliated by a chick. Clint is practically cackling every time she sinks a ball, while Natasha looks on approvingly.

“Rule of life,” Jane says from where Thor has led her to a nearby table. “Don’t challenge Darcy to pool, darts, or cards. She will _always_ win.”

“I’m starting to get that feeling,” Bucky says. His voice makes her look up and find his gaze, where he’s leaning against a nearby wall, arms crossed. There’s something threading through his words that seems a lot like desire. Or wishful thinking on Darcy’s part.

“It’s impressive,” Steve says, but he doesn’t sound impressed. His eyes are on the asshole who tried to pick Darcy up, like he’s calculating whether or not the guy’s a secret Hydra agent or just a run-of-the-mill creep.

A few minutes later, Darcy sinks the 8 ball and wins, curls her fingers around her stick and smirks at the livid loser. “Just be glad you didn’t bet money, man,” she says. “Now get lost.”

He points at her, opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but then slams his stick down onto the table and stalks off.

Darcy gives Clint a high five and passes her stick off to him as Natasha picks up the other, makes her way back to the table. Bucky and Steve join a moment later, settling back into their chairs – she wonders, briefly, if now they’re sticking close because they think to protect her. It’s sweet, if a little stifling.

“Where’d you learn to play pool like that?” Bucky asks with a grin.

Darcy stops cold, drink halfway to her lips. She finishes the motion after a moment, smooth as ever, licks her lips before setting it down. “My brothers,” she says. “Taught me how to play when I was younger.” She doesn’t mention that sometimes eating meant hustling, and you got good fast.

Steve leans forward, rests his elbows on the table. “I didn’t know you’ve got brothers.”

Darcy nods, can’t stop the sad smile that graces her lips. “Lost my oldest brother, Dean, a year ago,” she says quietly. “Sam kind of fell off the grid after that. They were close.”

There’s a hand on her arm, then, unobtrusive and gentle. So different from the asshole’s unwanted touches. “I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

Darcy shrugs, doesn’t know what else to do. “Yeah, well. We saw it coming for about a year, so it wasn’t a surprise.” It feels… good, she thinks, to talk about it to someone that isn’t Sam, isn’t as wrapped up in grief as she is. “And then Sam kind of lost it, when Dean was gone, and I haven’t heard from him since I came here about… what, eight months ago?”

“What about your parents?” Steve asks.

Darcy winces internally. “I, uh. Lost my mom when I was a baby, and Dad died a few years ago. So it was just the three of us.” She swallows, takes another drink. “And… now it’s just me, I guess.”

“Darce,” Bucky says, rubs circles into her skin with his thumb.

It’s too much, suddenly – the room is too loud, they’re too close. She shoves her chair back. “I need a minute,” she says.

Outside is quiet and dark, street lights and car lights bright flashes. The music from the bar is muffled out here, and she walks until she finds a quiet little place where she can only hear her breathing and the distant sounds of the city. It’s dark here too, and she leans against a brick wall, takes a deep breath.

And then she hears footsteps.

At first she thinks maybe it’s Jane – maybe it’s Bucky or Steve, that’d be nice – but then she realizes that the gait is too heavy, too purposeful. _Perfect_ , she thinks, a nice, good fight will do her some good.

“Look what we have here,” says a familiar voice – asshole from the bar, drunk and stupid with his ego sore. Idiot. “You out all alone, honey?”

He’s got friends, two of them. Darcy’s got nothing but her wits and her fists, but she’s sure that’s all that she’ll need. “I’m gonna be nice,” she says. “I’m gonna give you the chance, right now, to walk the hell away before I kick your ass.”

They don’t walk away.

One goes to grab her – she’s ready, slams her right fist into his nose so that he stumbles back a bit. She brings one foot up and drives it into his stomach, sending him to the ground, breathless and bleeding. The second friend comes from the right, swipes at her, but she drops, sweeps his feet out from under him in a smooth motion. She miscalculates how drunk the asshole is – he gets her in a hold from behind, makes her arms virtually useless. She slams a foot down on top of his at the same time she jerks her head back, surprising him into loosening his hold enough that she can get her fist down to give his balls a _very_ _firm_ whack.

He yelps, staggers back, right into a wall of super-soldier.

“Hi there,” Steve says, gripping his arms to hold him in place.

Bucky brushes past a surprised, breathless Darcy. “There’s a thing or two you should know about fucking with our girl,” he says, and pops the guy with a _stellar_ right hook.

It’s pretty fucking satisfying.

 

“Let me guess,” Bucky says as they walk back to the tower. Thor is carrying Jane on his back, while Natasha and Clint are arm in arm in front of them. Darcy is sandwiched between Steve and Bucky – like they’re afraid someone else is going to try to jump her or something – Steve with his hands in his pockets and Bucky with an arm slung around Darcy’s shoulders. “Your brothers taught you that as well?”

“Dad was… overprotective. And ex-Marine,” she replies.

“Because you fought like you’ve done it a lot,” Bucky says. Sometimes Darcy forgets that Bucky is a trained goddamn assassin, can probably spot her lies fifteen miles away. She’s in trouble, she thinks, falling for a man who can read her like a book.

“And like you enjoyed it,” Steve adds. There’s trouble number two, watching her like he wants to wrap her in a soft blanket and protect her from the world.

God, she is so _fucked_.

“My childhood wasn’t exactly normal,” she says, with finality.

They drop the subject then, letting it go for the moment at least. The rest of the walk is in silence, which morphs from awkward to companionable when Steve offers his arm to Darcy. The three of them are like in their own little bubble, and it’s wonderful, it really is.

“So what was with the ‘our girl’ comment?” Darcy asks, because it’s been on her mind, and she doesn’t want to get her hopes up.

To her surprise, Bucky blushes a bright red, and Steve is the one who chuckles. “I, uh. Slip of the tongue,” he says, and clears his throat. “Didn’t mean much by it, I mean.”

“I liked it,” Darcy replies quickly, smirking. Steve doesn’t let go of her arm, grins at her when she looks over at him.

It’s a good night.

 

Darcy gets back to her room, closes the door behind her. She checks her salt lines, she checks her Devil’s Traps, she checks her weapons. Then, she crawls into bed, still in her clothes, and curls up around a pillow. She’s got fucking butterflies in her stomach, like she’s fourteen again.

What would they think of this, she wonders? What would they think of her midnight activities?

Speaking of, she flips open the cover on her tablet and sets about getting to work.

“Miss Lewis,” Jarvis says above here. “There is a police report that I have saved for you.”

“Thank you, Jarv,” Darcy says. Perfect man is perfect, as usual. She flips through the articles, and then opens the one that Jarvis has saved.

Her heart plummets, blood runs cold.

Marjorie Williams is dead.


	5. Chapter 5

Darcy sneaks out of the tower, after that, duffle bag over her shoulder, and flags down a cab to head for the Williams’ home. It’s dark – there’s crime scene tape, but no one’s there save for a lonely police car parked in front. Darcy walks purposefully away from the house, frustrated – she’s not going to be able to break in if they’re guarding it, like they’re looking for something suspicious.

She has an option. She’s not happy about it.

 

Phil Coulson picks up on the second ring – it’s a new record for him, usually he answers on the first, promptly after the phone rings.

“Miss Winchester,” he greets, and he sounds like he’s just woken up.

“Lewis,” Darcy corrects. “What time is it?”

There’s a pause on the other end. Darcy relishes it – Coulson’s _totally_ counting backwards from ten or zen breathing or some shit. “It’s half past midnight,” he finally says.

“You _sleep_?” she asks. “I thought you just worked through the night and lived off coffee and the crushed souls of bad guys.”

“It’s an unfortunate flaw in my programming,” Coulson replies with what sounds like amusement in his tone. “Can I help you, Miss Lewis?”

“I need to get into the Marjorie Williams crime scene,” Darcy says, cuts right to the chase. “I need a shiny badge and someone in a suit.” Her attire isn’t going to cut it – she’s still dressed in her clothes from the bar, now with added hidden weapons.

When he shows up, he looks like he’d never been asleep at all, in a perfectly pressed suit and tie. He walks her to the tape, slides under it and holds it up for her to do the same, flashes his badge at the police officer stepping out of the car.

“Yours is in my desk drawer,” he says. “We’ll get it for you tomorrow.” And, then, like the smug bastard he really is, he smiles that little smile and says, “Welcome aboard, Miss Winchester.”

The house gives her the chills. She drops the duffle and pulls out her shotgun, loads it with rock salt under Phil Coulson’s unwavering gaze. She heads upstairs, first towards Abby’s room, and then the brother’s. Finally, she finds Marjorie’s – there’s blood splattered on the bed and walls, it’s not a particularly pretty sight.

“Fill me in,” Coulson says.

“Something is crushing people to death in their sleep.” Darcy gazes around the room, looking for any clues that she can use. “From what I’ve read, the last two deaths were pretty easy – chalked up to spontaneous collapsing of the lungs. This one, though… this one doesn’t look easy. My guess is Marjorie woke up during.”

“Do you have any ideas?”

Something catches Darcy eye, something on the baseboard of the wall. She walks over and crouches down, reaches into her back pocket for a glove, and swipes her finger across. She lifts the black goo to show Coulson. “Ectoplasm,” she says grimly. “From a ghost that is probably hella old. The question is, what kind of ghost _crushes_ people in their sleep. Damn it.”

She stands, strips the glove off and shoves it into her duffle bag. She makes a detour on her way out of the house, stopping by Abigail’s room, and rifling through the drawers of the nightstand. A triumphant noise escapes her when she pulls out a diary, which she shoves into the duffle as well.

“Alright,” she says, “we can go now. That cop out there is giving me the heebie-jeebies.”

Coulson makes an amused sound. “I can imagine that you’d be nervous around law enforcement,” he says.

“Was that a joke? Did you make a joke?” Darcy gives him a faux-shocked look. “I may faint.”

 

Darcy has an office. It has a computer, a brand new one, a damn good one, actually, as well as file folders and notebooks and tons of office supplies that Darcy never realized she needed until now. She can color coordinate her hunting notes if she wants to, which excites her more than it really, really should. Sam would be proud. There’s a wall of bulletin board, another of white board, a minifridge and a microwave... it is, quite frankly, a hunting headquarters to die for.

Even if it does remind her uncomfortably of pretty much every hotel room her dad had ever stayed in.

She stays at SHIELD way too long. By the time she leaves, she’s exhausted, ready to fall into bed. She leaned against the wall of the elevator as she rode up to her floor on the Tower, closing her eyes for a moment. The elevator dings far too soon, and she yawns as the doors opened to allow in none other than Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes in.

“ _There_ you are,” Bucky says, and then pauses. “You’re still wearing your clothes from last night.”

“Coulson was working a case, needed some help,” she says, with another yawn.

“Ah, yeah, your consultant status,” Bucky says. “Tony was talking about that.”

“I’m a glorified secretary,” she lies easily. She takes in their appearance and realizes that the pair of them are surprisingly dressed up – Steve’s hair is _always_ perfect, but today it’s _especially_ perfect, while Bucky’s wearing a nice shirt instead of the t-shirts he usually prefers. “Where have you two been?”

Steve blushes, and it’s just as adorable as ever. What gets Darcy though, is the fact that _Bucky_ blushes, scrubs at the back of his neck with his human hand.

“We were looking for you, actually,” Steve says. “Listen, so, Bucky and I have thought about it and talked it over and, uh.” They share a glance.

Darcy gets it then. Her stomach drops a little. “And you’re an item,” she finishes for him. “So I should probably stop hitting on you two, huh?”

“What? No, that’s not –“ Steve splutters. “I mean, we are. An item, that is, we’ve always been, but… that is…”

“What Steve’s trying to get at,” Bucky steps in, rescuing him, “is that we’d like to take you out for dinner sometime.”

 _Oh_. It’s like Christmas in motherfucking July, hell yeah, Darcy thinks. “With both of you?”

“Like a date,” Steve adds. “If you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” Darcy says quickly. The elevator dings, but they all ignore it. “I’m definitely interested. I really need to get some sleep, though, so maybe not tonight?”

“How about Friday night, around seven?” Steve suggests. “I have to be at SHIELD all day tomorrow, and that’s… tiring.”

That gave her two days to freak out about a date with a pair of super-soldiers. And also to buy a new outfit. “Sounds great,” she says. “Friday at seven sounds great.”

When Darcy steps off the elevator, she feels like she’s floating. She also feels like she’s fourteen again, going out with a boy for the first time without her brother’s stalking her protectively, like the guy was going to turn out to be a demon in disguise or something. She has the brief thought that if a demon possessed Steve, it would probably turn immediately into something light and pure.

She really needs sleep.

 

It’s only after she’s slept for at least six hours that she finally cracks open Abigail’s diary. It gives her a few interesting insights – an overbearing grandmother that no one liked, nightmares of something sitting on her chest. The grandmother is an interesting lead, but it doesn’t really tell her what _kind_ of ghost this is.

“Jarvis,” she says, eyes still trained on the pages of the diary. “Can you trace a family tree and find any living relatives of Marjorie Williams?”

“I can. The search will take approximately two hours, Miss Lewis,” Jarvis replies, easy and comforting.

Darcy closes the diary and takes a moment to relax. The quiet of her room is broken by a sudden insistent buzzing, but it’s not her Stark phone going off, she finds. Instead, she digs out a pair of jeans that she had worn a day or so earlier to find the flip phone buzzing away in the pocket.

It’s Sam.

She hesitates – does she want to talk to him? They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, with Ruby and the drinking and Dean gone. In the end, at the last minute, she can’t resist, flips open the phone.

“Hi, Sam,” she says, a little more excited than she really would like to betray. She’s still mad at him, damn it, still hurt and angry, but she also misses him like a lost limb.

“Hey, sis.” He sounds like she remembers him from a year earlier, maybe a little less tired and, from what she can tell, he’s not drunk. There’s music in the background, someone’s voice – he must be in a bar or something, working a case. “Listen, I’m… I’m sorry I haven’t called you. Things got tough.”

“Yeah, I know. They got tough here too,” she says, and it feels like an olive branch between them. Like Darcy isn’t alone anymore. There’s a pause and suddenly Darcy doesn’t want anymore silence between them. “So I’m working a case,” she says quickly. “Maybe you can give me a hand.”

“Yeah, yeah, what are you dealing with?” Sam asks.

“A family being crushed in their sleep,” Darcy says, leans over to grab her own journal and flip through her notes. “Cops have chalked it up to pneumothorax, but I found ectoplasm at the house. Last victim seems to have woken up during, but the first two stayed asleep, so I think it might actually paralyze them or something. The first two scenes weren’t bloody, as far as I know, but the last one was.”

“Sounds like an alp or a night hag,” Sam says. “Traps them in a dream and crushes them, slowly.”

“Night hag would make a lot of sense, I think,” Darcy murmurs, then, louder, “There’s a grandmother that no one liked. It’s possible she owned the house before them.”

“I was thinking,” Sam says, abruptly, like he has to get it out before he loses courage. “I was thinking, uh, maybe I could head to New Mexico and we could meet up? I have something to show you.”

“I’m not in New Mexico anymore, Sam.” Darcy pauses. “I’m in New York, but… I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” A phone call’s a start, sure, but there’s still some unease that ripples through her at the thought of seeing her brother without Dean.

She can _hear_ Sam’s smile fall. “Darce…”

“I’ve got a day job, and Jane’s working at Stark Tower,” she says. How was she going to explain that her friends were superheroes? How was she going to explain that she ate dinner with Tony Stark more often than not? He was sure not to believe her, instead to think that she had fallen victim to a trickster. How was she going to explain going on a date with two guys to her overprotective brother? That they weren’t just any guys – it was Captain fucking America and the Winter fucking Soldier, Steve and Bucky. Suddenly, just like that, she was alone again, like another rift between them. This time it was her fault. “And I’m hunting in the city most nights. I’m in the middle of a job, Sam, I just don’t think it’s a good time right now.”

“Darcy,” Sam says. “Please. Just for a couple days. I just want to see you.”

Darcy wavers. She wants to see him, is the thing, wants to ride off into the sunset again, like how it used to be. Too much has happened for it to be the same, for them to fall in the same rhythms and routines. Dean is gone. She hasn’t forgiven him yet for choosing Ruby over her. Roots have grown, though, seeped into the concrete beneath her. She’s healing, filling spaces and gaps she didn’t even know she had. She has a date she wants to keep, for God’s sake.

But it’s her family, and Sam is all that she has left now. The gasoline is in her hand, but she can’t burn this bridge, can’t bring herself to light the match. She’ll probably never be able to – this is the closest she’s ever been.

“Fine,” she relents. “For a couple days, Sam.” It’s not her finest moment, but she can see him, in her mind’s eye, with the puppy dog face. Her weakness has always been her family – it’s a weakness they all shared.

“You’ll like what I’m bringing you, Darcy,” Sam promises. “I’ll be there… probably Saturday, okay?”

“Okay,” she says. “Drive safe.”

Then she has to hang up, before he can even say goodbye, because if she hears that word one more time in her life, it’ll be too soon. Darcy lets the phone fall from her hand, lays back on the bed and stares at the ceiling – she’s not sure if she feels better or worse. She’s not sure if it would be easier if Sam just stayed gone.

She's not sure she should have answered the phone.


	6. Chapter 6

Darcy does what she’s always done when she’s frustrated and unsure of herself – she throws herself into a workout. It’s ironic, because it’s Sam who taught her to vent her insecurities through healthy means. He’d suggested yoga, because of course he had, but she’d always preferred the treadmill. She plugs her music in and loses herself in it – first, in classic rock, but it hurts too much (her whole life, she’s beginning to realize, are things that her brothers have handed her). She switches the playlist to the lesser-used one called “Girl,” lets herself get lost in the beats of Lana, Florence, and Lorde.

She stops she’s not sure how long later. She’s covered in sweat, breathing hard – she’d tried to pace herself, but above all she hadn’t wanted to think. She wants to punch something, she thinks, or spar with someone, but everyone in the Tower except for _maybe_ Tony is a little out of her league. Darcy pulls her earbuds out and glances around, considers going a round or two with a punching bag, when she sees that Steve has already beat her to it.

She watches him for a moment. He seems like he’s really got it in for the bag, lines of tension in his whole body. He’s angry about something, Darcy thinks, and she wants to go over and soothe it from him, rub her hand down his back.

“Leave him,” Bucky says.

Darcy doesn’t jump a foot in the air or scream, but it’s a damn close thing. She turns – he’s lifting weights, with his human arm, glancing at her every so often.

“Is he okay?” she finally asks when she’s caught her breath.

Bucky shrugs, puts the weight down gingerly, and rolls his shoulder. “We all have demons,” he says, gruff. Then, he looks at her with eyes that see too much. “You look like you were running from yours.”

She laughs, she can’t help it, mirthless and short. “You have no idea,” she says honestly, because he doesn’t, hasn’t got a single clue that she’s been running from demons her whole life. “No demons here. No, my brother called.” She takes a minute, sits down on the bench beside him and wipes her face with her towel.

“Sam, right?”

“Yeah.” Darcy glances at him. “I’m surprised you remembered.” Bucky just shrugs – he’s got a little bit of haunting in his eyes as well, Darcy notices, and so she plows on, fills the silence. “Anyway, he called me up, he’s coming out this way for a couple days.”

“And you don’t know how to feel.”

“It’s creepy when you do that thing where you read me like a book.” She sighs, looks at the grey of the bench under her hand. “But yeah. On the one hand, he’s literally the only family I have left. On the other…” She stops. Swallows. “Well. There’s another hand. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” Bucky says, nods toward Steve still punching away like he’s got something to prove about his stamina. Which, Darcy’s gotta say, is looking pretty damn impressive.

God, Darcy wants someone to confide in. The best she can give is the Sparknotes version, though, and so she does. “My family’s not… normal. We traveled, hardly ever stayed in the same place for more than a couple months, for my dad’s job. It was just me and my brothers most of the time, and Dean took care of me and Sam more than Dad ever did. So with Dad gone, when Dean died… Sam and I kind of fell apart.” She swallows, shrugging. “He started drinking and hooking up with this girl who was bad news.” Here was the tricky part. Bucky watched her, nodding along to show he was listening, she supposed. She felt guilty for the amount of editing she was about to do. “And so he went out with her one night instead of sticking together, like we were supposed to, and I got the holy shit beaten out of me behind some bar in Alabama.” In actuality, Sam had gone somewhere to do something with Ruby, and Darcy had been left alone. Long story short, and it was a long, painful story, Darcy had wound up in the hospital. “When he left the hospital room one night to go hook up with her again, I figured I just… I couldn’t watch it anymore. I checked myself out and left.” She shrugs, suddenly self-conscious, heart in her throat again, like she’s leaving Alabama one more time. “So, Janey took me in, and the rest is history.”

“I can see how you’d be conflicted,” Bucky says. “You’re still grieving.”

“I’ll always be grieving,” Darcy murmurs softly. “For both of them, I think. For a lot of things.”

Fingers skim along her back, pull her into Bucky’s chest. He rests his chin on top of her head, and she closes her eyes, lets herself be held for a moment. It’s a bonus that he’s sweating lightly, the slide of their skin is… tempting, to say the least. A few moments later, the bench moves, and there’s another arm wrapping around her, a face tentatively resting on her shoulder. She smiles, twists an arm back to card through Steve’s hair.

“Sweaty gym cuddles are the best cuddles,” she says, and listens to the sound of Bucky’s chuckle deep in his chest.

 

When she gets back to her room, she remembers belatedly that she’d had Jarvis research the family tree. She looks at what he’s found while she unpacks and repacks her duffle bag. Grandmother’s buried in a cemetery in the city, so there’s something to keep in mind – as is the fact that there’s apparently another family member, Marjorie’s sister, Caroline.

“She’ll inherit the house,” Darcy says aloud to herself. “ _Shit_. Jarvis, can you get me an address?” She can’t go to that house – Darcy has a gut feeling that the hag is protective of the house more than anything else. “You know what, text it to me.”

She throws the duffle bag over her shoulder, grabs her half-collapsed shovel, and heads out the door, locks her room up tight behind her. Darcy has a bad feeling about this whole thing – there’s an itch under her skin, and her instinct is telling her that this woman is in danger. She’s got to get to the graveyard.

Darcy calls Coulson in the elevator. “I’m finishing this case up tonight,” she says. “Can you run by the house and make sure no one is there?”

“I believe I offered the services of agents for this,” Coulson replies. “I assume you’ll also be working?”

“I’m gonna go dig up a body,” Darcy says, with unfortunate timing – the door opens on Bucky and Steve, who are both now looking at her with confused expressions. “…Thanks, gotta go, bye.” She promptly hangs up on Coulson – it’s not her proudest moment. It’s pretty damn incriminating, considering she’s also _holding a fucking shovel_. “Hi.”

“Are you… are you really going to go dig up a body?” Bucky asks after a moment of them staring at each other.

“No,” she lies, and carefully slides past them. They watch her go, glancing at each other. “It’s a thing for Coulson. I can’t explain. I’ll see you later!”

And then she flees, because she is a _coward_.

 

Darcy gets to the graveyard and starts digging, as quickly as she can. She’s been caught before and mostly it’s just a pain in the ass – not to mention, she doesn’t really have enough money to pay anybody off right now. Her phone rings halfway through digging the hole down to Evelyn Williams’ coffin.

“What?” she snaps.

“I’m trapped in the house,” is what Coulson replies with.

Darcy swears. “Okay, whatever you do, don’t lay down. Find some salt, make a circle, and _stay_ in there.”

“Why would I –“ There’s a crash, and the phone goes dead on his end.

“Son of a _bitch,”_ Darcy snaps, and sets to digging as fast as she can.

There’s the sound of footsteps behind her, as well as someone’s shocked gasp. Darcy freezes, turns to see none other than Steve and Bucky watching her with matching shocked expressions. It’s like the elevator, but definitely worse.

“You’re _really_ digging up a body!” Bucky says, halfway sounding like he’s in awe. “You’re _actually_ doing it!”

“I can explain,” she replies. “I swear I can, but I can’t right now.”

Her shovel finally hits something solid then – she glances away from them, hauls back, and smashes the coffin open. Coulson isn’t calling back, and she can only hope that he’s got himself a nice little circle of salt.

“What’s going on? Why are you doing this?” Steve demands, Captain America voice out in full force.

“What the hell is this shotgun doing here?” Bucky adds, gesturing to the one lying on the edge of the hole she’s dug.

Darcy, though, has been ignoring authoritative male voices for twenty-odd years, she’s not about to give in now. She smashes until she’s staring at a skeleton, breathing harshly in the night. Then, she turns, and starts to climb out of the hole.

Something grabs her by the back of the shirt, flings her back down like she weighs nothing at all. There’s a shriek, sudden and sharp, and it takes a moment for her to realize that it comes from her. “Run!” she shouts to Bucky and Steve, clambering up again – ignoring her, they each grab an arm and pull her to her feet. Darcy goes for the duffel, where her lighter fluid and salt is. She should have had them closer, damn it, damn her!

There’s another shriek – this time it’s not her, this time it’s the sudden apparition of the hag, long white hair and claws. Darcy hits the ground again, thrown by an inhuman force, and this time, this time she can’t get up.

There’s a weight on her chest, holding her down.

She flings a hand out, but the gun is out of reach. “Rock salt!” she manages to gasp out. “It’s loaded with rock salt!”

A metal hand picks up the gun. “Cover your eyes,” Bucky shouts, and she does. The gun goes off and the weight is lifted – fuck, but it hurts to breathe. She holds a hand out and they help her up again, watch as she staggers back to the duffle.

“You see it, you shoot,” she says, breathlessly. Her hand finally, _finally_ closes around the salt, brushes the lighter fluid, and she yanks them out of the bag. She shoves the salt at Steve and stumbles over to the grave – it’s surprisingly hard for her to breathe, and it’s more than a little terrifying. She wishes, briefly, for an inhaler that she no longer has, despite the fact that she’s sure it wouldn’t help.

“What do I do?” Steve asks.

She opens the lighter fluid and starts to pour. “Pour,” she says, still breathless. There’s another shriek and the sound of the shotgun going off behind her. “Now!”

Thankfully, he does as he’s told, opens up the salt and sprinkles it on the body like Darcy’s doing with the lighter fluid. After a few moments, Darcy throws the lighter fluid bottle onto the grass, digs in her pocket for a match, and drops it in. There’s a final, mournful shriek as the hag appears and then burns away into nothing at all.

Darcy takes a moment to breathe raggedly, sits down hard in the grass. In a minute she’ll get up and start filling the hole in again, but first she’s got to catch her breath. She peels her shirt away from her chest – realizes that it’s red and painful, like it’s going to bruise. Damn. That thing had very nearly crushed _her_.

Steve and Bucky both sit down beside her, one on either side. Bucky’s still holding the shotgun and Steve’s still holding the salt, like they’re afraid the hag’s going to come back – hell, they probably do, they have no experience with this.

“That was a ghost – well, technically a night hag,” she says. “And now it’s dead.”

“This have anything to do with your ‘not normal’ childhood?” Bucky asks. He’s too smart for his own good. It’s really sexy, Darcy thinks. Also, she’s kind of light-headed.

Her breathing is slowing down, at least, and she can take stock of what’s her own panic and what’s a result of the hag. “I prefer to say my childhood was supernatural,” she says. “It’s what I’m consulting for. Demons, ghosts… you name something out of a fantasy novel, I’ve probably fought it.”

She waits, then, for them to tell her that she’s crazy, that she’s lost her mind, that that couldn’t be what they’ve just seen. Instead, they just nod, watching the fire.

“Really?” she says. “Just gonna believe me, just like that?”

“I’m ninety-years old,” Bucky says, at the same time that Steve snorts and replies with, “I fought aliens.”

Huh. They make pretty good points. “In that case, fill the hole in,” she says, and lays back on the grass. “Then we can go pick up Coulson.”

Surprisingly, they do as she says.

 

Coulson comes out of the house in probably the most disheveled state that Darcy’s ever seen him – his tie is askew. He’s sporting a bruise on his face, however, probably the result of flying into something. As for a ride, it turns out he doesn’t need one, he has a SHIELD-issued car.

“I expect a full report tomorrow,” he says to Darcy. “Please don’t call me again tonight.”

All in all, that’s pretty fair, Darcy figures.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a chapter that gives us an explicit warning.

Darcy can’t shake the adrenaline. She bounces in the elevator on their way up, taps her fingers on her thigh. Her chest hurts a little, but it’s manageable – now would be the time that she would go out for a celebratory drink and maybe fall into a bed somewhere. Now with a pair of almost-boyfriends, though, falling into a random stranger’s bed doesn’t sound appealing at all.

Falling into theirs would be much more preferable.

“How are you just accepting this?” she finally asks – demands, more like. “Everyone else always just says I’m crazy or tells me to stop lying.” It’s ironic, the one time she tells the truth people think it’s a lie. Saving people is difficult when no one can believe a word that you say.

Bucky glances at her. “Little hard not to believe when the proof nearly killed you,” he says.

She doesn’t miss the way that Steve’s body tightens at the words. “How’s your breathing?” he asks, as the elevator dings. They’re to Steve and Bucky’s floor, but they’re not getting off, instead staring at her expectantly.

Darcy shrugs. “Hurts,” she says honestly. “I’m bruised all to hell. Not the worst I’ve had, though.” It isn’t, either, not by a long shot. A couple of bruised ribs are pretty par for the course, actually.

To her surprise, Bucky flings an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, doll, let’s get you patched up.”

They walk her off of the elevator, and it takes her a minute to realize that she’s been practically shanghaied. One they get into Bucky and Steve’s apartment, Darcy strips off her outer-shirt, a classic Winchester flannel, leaving her in just a tank top. Bruising is already starting to show above the line of her shirt, and Steve frowns at it.

“It really isn’t that bad,” she tries, but he’s already rummaging around drawers and such.

“You have a cut on your cheek,” Bucky says. “I’m guessin’ from when it took you down.”

“I really need a shower,” Darcy says. “I’m covered in graveyard dirt and ghost ick.”

Bucky leans in. “No pressure, but it’d probably make Steve feel a lot better if you stuck close for a little while.”

Darcy shrugs – a shower is a shower, and getting naked with two gorgeous men in the next room over sounded absolutely wonderful. Of course, it’d be better if they were _joining_ her in the shower, but… she’ll take what she can get.

They set her up with a towel and a pair of workout shorts, as well as one of Steve’s tees – she’s gonna drown in it, holy god. She really doesn’t want to put any of her clothes back on, as they’re sweaty and gross, covered in dirt and grime. She spends far too long in the shower, uses the manly shampoo and the manly soap, and finally gets a good look at herself in the mirror.

The cut on her cheek isn’t the only one – she has a few scrapes on her arms, as well. The bruising on her chest is going to be prominent for a while, she thinks, resigning her poor boobs to regular t-shirts for awhile. She twists her hair up into a towel, then lets it fall down her back in a curly cascade. She pulls Steve’s shirt and the shorts on – she has to cinch the shorts tight to be able to wear them at all, and they’re riding pretty low. The shirt, meanwhile, pulls over her boobs in such a way that Darcy kind of wants to whistle at herself.

She’s being ridiculous, she knows, is probably just a little turned on because they smell like Steve and Bucky – _she_ smells like Steve and Bucky, thanks to the shampoo and soap.

Darcy leaves the bathroom and heads for the living room. She can hear the low timbre of Steve and Bucky’s voices carry through the apartment. They stop when she walks in the room, like she doesn’t know that it means they were talking about her. Bucky has this amused look on his face – it drops when he turns to look at her, replaced instead by raised eyebrows and a devilish smirk. Steve’s got a blush that only gets redder, and he drops whatever ointment he’s holding.

“Contain yourselves,” Darcy says with a grin. She can feel the sexual tension rising, but maybe that’s just her, maybe that’s just the high after the hunt talking. They’re probably exhausted, she thinks, as the revelation of a darker world is often a taxing one.

“Contain _your_ self,” Bucky replies. “Stevie has ointment for your chest.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Darcy informs Steve, and promptly strips off her shirt. It’s daring, she knows, a little too bold, even for her, but she wants the exposure, wants to see how far up that wall she can drive them.

Steve drops the ointment again, but he doesn’t look away. Bucky lets out a low whistle and looks to Steve. “Please tell me I get to do the ointment,” he says.

“No,” Steve says. “You’ll… grope.”

“You’re damn right I’ll grope, look at her.”

“Jesus, Bucky,” Steve says, but it’s a mild reproach, like he agrees with Bucky. He sure as hell can’t seem to tear his eyes away.

“I can apply my own ointment,” Darcy says, amused.

“That would be a damn shame,” Bucky says. “It’s our job as your potential boyfriends to properly take care of your injuries.”

“Get to caring, then,” Darcy says, like a dare, quirking an eyebrow at them. She’s standing there in low-slung shorts with no top on to speak of, _something_ needs to happen. She feels like she’s waiting for them to make the first move, which really isn’t normal for her. “Or,” she says, not wanting this silence to stretch out between them. “We can say fuck the ointment, and one of you can come over here and kiss me.”

They stare at each other. Finally, Steve looks to Darcy, to Bucky, and then back to Darcy. He doesn’t pick the ointment up as he strides forward, like a sudden surge of courage. He stops in front of her, lets his hands settle on her shoulders, and she’s so damn _small_ compared to him, this tiny thing next to this hunk-of-burning-love of a man.

“Fuck the ointment,” Steve says, soft, and draws her up.

Steve kisses like he’s got nothing to lose, like he’s all offense and no defense, like this is the last stand of a doomed man. It’s gentle and overwhelming all at once, and Darcy loses herself in it, lets it take over her for a moment until she _needs_ to breathe. When they pull away, Darcy knows the picture she makes – mouth open, lips slightly swollen and shiny, Steve’s hands framing her face.

Darcy’s pants choose that moment, that perfect moment, to fall off of her hips and hit the floor. It’s like it’s fate.

Bucky lets out a low whistle. “Guess those didn’t fit.”

“They were coming off next anyway,” Darcy says.

Steve slides his hands down, to her shoulders, to her collar, to her breasts – thumbs her nipples and rolls them. “Stop me if I go too far,” he says. “Or if I make you uncomfortable, or – “

“Steve,” Darcy breathes. “Steve, baby, you can go as far as you want.”

Steve groans, drops his head to her neck and kisses, all soft and sweet like he wants to cherish her or something.

“Should probably move this to the bedroom,” Bucky says from behind them. “Not that Steve hasn’t thought about eating you out on the couch, I’m sure.”

Darcy shivers. “Is _that_ where this is going?” Steve’s lips find her nipple, and she supposes she has her answer. He gets his hands under her ass and lifts her – she startles, wrapping her legs around him, and then lets out a breathless laugh when she realizes that Steve Rogers, Captain fucking America, is manhandling her to his bed. It’s like a dream come true.

She looks over his shoulder to see Bucky following behind, an obvious bulge in his jeans, stripping his shirt off as they went. Steve lays her down on the bed gently, hand behind her head, like the Prince Charming that he is, and kisses her again. It’s just as breathtaking as the first time.

The bed moves behind her and Bucky settles, pulling her up and back so that her back is to his front, legs bracketing hers. He’s still wearing his jeans, but his fly is open, Darcy realizes, and there’s something inherently sexy about the fact that she’s naked and they’re not – Steve is still in his jeans and t-shirt, after all, even as he joins her on the bed. Bucky’s arm comes around Darcy’s waist, holding her tight, and his lips find her ear, free hand coming up to flick at a nipple.

“Hi there, gorgeous,” he says. “You’re in for a hell of a time – Stevie’s so damn good with his mouth. Spread your legs for him, honey, nice and wide.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, a little reproachful.

Darcy does it, flushes and can’t help the shiver at Bucky’s words. “I like it,” she says quickly. “I’ll tell him off myself if I don’t.”

Steve nods, apparently mollified that Bucky isn’t mistreating her somehow. He settles between her legs, drags his hands up her calves and inner thighs, drawing one to hook around his shoulders.

“Is this okay?” he asks, kisses her thigh.

Darcy shivers and nods – it’s cute that he’s so sweet.

“Don’t be fooled,” Bucky says, brushes her hair back out of her face. “He’s downright evil in bed sometimes, watch him.”

And then, _then_ , Steve _smirks_ , like Bucky’s telling the truth, and licks at her, quick and teasing. She can’t bite back the little gasp – it’s been awhile, okay – and from the look on Steve’s face at the sound, he doesn’t want her to. He starts slow, kisses at her with kitten-licks and teasing strokes of his tongue. Then, his hands find the small of her back and pull her in, hold her where he wants her, and fucks his tongue into her, sucks on her clit until she’s gripping at Bucky’s arms.

The whole time, Bucky keeps up a monologue of filth, low and husky in her ear. “He’s good, isn’t he, honey? Knows just what to do to keep you ridin’ that edge. One of these days, he’ll do that for _hours_ , and I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, lettin’ him lick you open until you’re begging for it? He’s been talking about this for weeks, wondered how good you’d taste, what kinds of pretty sounds you’d make.”

Steve slides a finger into her and crooks it – _come hither_ , indeed – and Darcy comes, arches her back and lets out a broken moan. Steve smirks again, and there’s an expression she never thought she’d see, and fucks her through it, nice and slow, slips a second finger in beside the first.

“She’s so wet, Buck,” he says, but his eyes don’t leave Darcy’s.

“Don’t fuckin’ tease,” Bucky replies, brushes Darcy’s hair back away from her face, over her shoulders.

Darcy breathes, lets the aftershocks of her orgasm mix with the pleasure Steve’s providing. “I hope someone’s planning on fucking me,” she says.

Steve’s response is to pull away and start stripping, and while she _definitely_ wants those fingers back, she is also not complaining. He pulls off his shirt to reveal abs to fucking die for, shimmies out of his jeans to show a tush you could bounce a quarter off of. She half-wants to try, she thinks wildly. Then, he’s standing before her, full frontal, and all of a sudden Darcy wants to hum a song about America or thank a president or take a picture or something because _damn_.

“I’m gonna need a warm-up,” she says. “A practice round, if you will.”

“That’s why you have me, doll,” Bucky says from behind her. “I’ll fuck you open for Stevie here, and then you can ride him.”

“Into the sunset,” Darcy agrees.

“If that’s okay,” Steve adds. “Because if it’s not-“

“Steve,” Darcy interrupts. “Steve, honey. I want to write poetry about your dick. I am _going_ to ride your dick. After Bucky fucks me like I want him to.”

Bucky makes a sound that’s something like interest, emphasized by the hard-on pressing against Darcy’s back. “And how is that?”

Looking Steve in the eye, mostly because she can’t tear hers away, Darcy replies, “On all fours while you’re pulling my hair.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Bucky says, at the same time that Steve murmurs an emphatic, “ _Fuck_.”

Darcy Lewis-Winchester is a woman who knows what she wants, and right now she wants Bucky Barnes naked. She wriggles out of his grasp and turns to face him. She gets a hand on his zipper and he swears – she drags it down, nice and slow, thinks briefly that she should have done it with her teeth, just to show off. The bed dips beside her and there’s a hand at her back, sliding down her spine, like Steve can’t stand not to touch. Two condoms hit the bed, and Darcy glances down at them for a moment before looking back to Bucky with a grin.

“It’s good one of us is thinking with our big head,” she says.

“Which one of Steve’s is that? It’s hard to tell,” Bucky quips, and Steve blushes.

Darcy finally gets Bucky free, and yeah, Bucky’s nothing to shake a stick at either. She kind of wants to wrap her lips around it, feel the weight and the taste of him heavy on her tongue, but she supposes she has to have some kind of party trick for later. Besides, she really, really wants to get fucked.

“Come on, soldier,” she says, and he helpfully rolls them, gets her underneath him and nips at her neck, slides his hand down between her legs. She lets out a breathy moan as he slides two fingers into her, starts sucking a hickey on her neck.

He pulls off a moment later, scissors his fingers just to watch her squirm, if the look on his face is any indication. “She _is_ wet, Jesus,” he says before he pulls his fingers out.

“Don’t tease,” Steve says. He settles on the bed beside her as she rolls over, gets her hands and knees under her. His hand finds her hair, cards through it gently before it slides down her neck and across her shoulders. It’s like he can’t help but touch, like he wants to map out every part of her with his palms, get to know her with his fingertips. It’s sweet and sexy all at the same time.

Darcy looks over her shoulder at the sound of foil crinkling to see Bucky roll a condom on himself. Damn, she could have done that with her mouth too, she thinks, but then his metal hand finds her hips, a gentle stroke of his thumb getting her attention.

“Ready, honey?” he asks, and waits for her nod before he starts pressing into her.

And fuck, but it feels good to be full, the drag of his cock against her heady. He gives her a moment before he pulls out and thrusts in again, and she lets out a groan, gives him a few more thrusts like that one before she tosses her hair and says, “Harder.”

He delivers. The next one nearly sends her face-first to the bed, and it’s _perfect_ , just the right angle and just the right amount of friction and force to hit all of her buttons. Bucky gets his human hand in her hair, and he pulls hair like a champ, just enough pain but not too much.

“Careful, Bucky,” Steve admonishes, smoothes a hand down her side.

“I like it,” Darcy says breathlessly. “Fuck, I _love_ it.”

“Hurts just right, doesn’t it?” Bucky says, and he sounds perfectly normal, like he doesn’t even have to work to fuck her as hard as he wants, as hard as she wants him to. “Fuck, I bet if I had you on your back you’d scratch the hell out of me.”

“Maybe next time,” Darcy replies, and Bucky draws her head back until the line of her neck is arched, mouth open as he fucks into her again and again.

Steve’s lips find her throat, pressing gentle kisses in stark contrast to Bucky’s thrusts. His hands find her breasts, swinging heavy beneath her, thumbs tweaking at her nipples until she’s whining, egging Bucky on, daring him to fuck her, until she’s riding the wave of her second orgasm. She collapses forward, onto her elbows, but keeps her ass in the air.

Bucky breathes out a low groan, lets go of her hair to get both hands on her hips. “Fuck, she’s so tight, Stevie,” he says, breathless now. His thrusts grow erratic until he pulls her into him, fingers tightening just enough that they might leave little marks later. Then, he’s pulling out of her, settling back and giving her ass a firm pat. “I like this view,” he says.

She very kindly wiggles her ass for him – she probably looks ridiculous, bent as she is, face down and ass up. Still, she’s sure he appreciates it.

“Sit against the headboard,” Bucky tells Steve while Darcy’s catching her breath. “Just like when I ride you.”

There’s another crinkle, another foil packet being opened, except then Steve is moaning. Darcy turns her head to see Bucky’s hand sliding over Steve’s dick, the metal one, while Steve looks down at Bucky like he hung the moon. Briefly, Darcy wonders if there’s a place for her here, really, but then Steve’s turning his eyes to her, holding out his hand.

“Come on, doll,” Bucky says. “Climb aboard.”

“Don’t be crass,” Steve says, blushing.

“I’m sorry, come ride Steve’s massive dick.”

Darcy laughs, clambers up until she’s straddling Steve’s lap. Steve’s hands cover her hips, and Bucky’s hands cover his – it’s all three of them here, in this moment.

“Hi,” she says, lines up, and slides down, nice and slow. The stretch is so _good_ , she’s so fucking full of him, and she sinks until she’s sitting flush against him. Then, Darcy finally looks at Steve’s face.

His eyes are open – they find hers immediately – and his lips are parted in an open-mouthed grin, a flush coloring his cheeks and all the way down his chest. His hair is tousled from lying on the bed, and his head is tilted back against the headboard, and fuck, she wants him so bad, even while she has him.

Steve kisses her, just as slow as before, rolls his hips experimentally. Darcy gasps into his mouth, the pull and drag just as good as it had been with Bucky. She levers herself up, but Bucky brings her down, hands on her hips. Steve slides a hand around to her back.

“My show, Buck,” he says, not tearing his eyes away. Bucky doesn’t remove his hands but he does let out a noise of assent.

Steve pulls her close, flush against him until her chest is pressed against his. He rocks up again, fucks up into her deep and slow, moving his hips so that she’s really not doing any work and reaping all the benefits. Darcy swears and Steve chuckles, rolls his hips again and again.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says, and her heart swells, and Darcy thinks that she falls a little in love with him in that moment because he _means_ it, he’s not trying to pick her up at a bar or get her number. He truly thinks she’s beautiful.

She comes like that, him murmuring sweet things and his cock rocking up inside her. Then, she rides him like she means it, with Bucky’s help, until he’s shaking apart in _her_ arms, clutching her close and swearing.

Darcy falls asleep between them, wearing a pair of Bucky’s boxers and one of Steve’s shirts.


	8. Chapter 8

Darcy wakes up surrounded by heat. It’s not what wakes her, though – no, that honor is reserved for the incessant fucking buzzing coming from somewhere in the room. Steve is pawing at the nightstand on his side of the bed for something, while Bucky just groans into the pillow.

“Not mine,” Steve says, slurred and sleepy, as the buzzing finally stops.

Darcy prepares herself to go back asleep.

“Damn it,” she hisses when it starts again.

“On the floor,” Bucky says, waves a hand in the general direction of Darcy’s discarded graveyard clothes from the night before, the ones that Steve had so graciously just tossed in a laundry basket.

Darcy wiggled her way out from between them with another curse. Bucky grins at her sleepily, pats her ass when she rolls over him to get her bare feet onto the floor. She gets the cell out of her pocket right at the last second.

“What,” she says, scrubs at her face.

“Darcy?” It’s Sam, and suddenly Darcy is awake, because he sounds vaguely confused and a little afraid. “I’m, uh. I’m in New York.”

“I thought you said Saturday.” Darcy sandwiches the phone between her ear and her shoulder. “I thought you were in… Where’d you say you were?”

“I didn’t,” Sam says, and stops right there, doesn’t explain.

Darcy pauses in her search for her underwear. “Don’t start that shit with me, Sam. Don’t hide things from me.”

“Look, I’m standing in your apartment, and you’re not here, so,” Sam replies, getting that little bit of _bitch_ into his tone that Darcy _hates_.

Then what he’s said hits her. “ _In_ my apartment?”

“People were starting to look at us funny,” Sam says.

“ _Us_?” Darcy nearly drops the phone. “I swear to God, Sam, if you’re standing in my apartment with Ruby, I’m going to kill you.”

“It’s not,” Sam says, suddenly soothing and placating. “Look, just… where are you? You said you were working a job, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Darcy says automatically. “Finished it last night.” And she doesn’t want to do this, but she doesn’t really have a lot of options here. “Look, can you find Stark Tower?”

“I think that’s pretty hard to miss, yeah.”

Darcy rolls her eyes at his sarcasm _and_ the tower. “Come here instead, 27 th floor. Jarvis will point you in the direction of my suite.”

“You have a _suite_ at _Stark Tower_?” Sam says, disbelief lancing through his voice.

“A lot’s changed, Sammy,” Darcy snaps. “Are you coming or what?”

“Yeah, soon.”

“Soon,” Darcy agrees, and hangs up.

It’s not the way she wants to start this little visit, not the way she wants their reunion to go. It’s really the only way it _can_ go, she thinks desolately. There’s so much _shit_ between them now, pain and loss and Ruby, and it all just echoes and bounces off of one and onto the other, rinse and repeat.

“Everything okay?” Bucky asks, watching her from where he’s laying on the bed. Steve’s curled up behind him, head propped up to watch her as well.

“Yeah,” she says. “My brother’s here early, and I think he brought his girlfriend.” She sighs, gives them an apologetic look. “I might need to reschedule our date.”

“It’s all good,” Bucky says, and Steve nods. “Do what you have to do, honey.”

Steve sits up. “We’ll walk you back to your suite,” he says, and that’s pretty sweet right there. He’s offering to take the elevator a whole three floors up. Probably just to get some extra time with her.

Darcy feels her bad mood unravel like a string in her chest, and a real smile touches her face. “I think that’d be nice.”

 

She gets clothes on – Steve’s shirt, but her own jeans, as to avoid a public fashion fiasco. She gets up to the 27th floor and lingers in the elevator, but Steve and Bucky step out. Apparently they intend to walk her _literally_ to her door. It’s adorable. Darcy has no idea what to do with it.

They’re almost there when Jarvis speaks up. “Miss Lewis,” he says, all crisp and clear. “Your brothers are waiting in your suite.”

Darcy stops dead, eyes going wide. “Brothers? Plural?”

“Indeed, Miss Lewis. Two.”

Darcy breaks into a run for her door. She needs to get to her guns and knives as quickly as she can, before they got up to the room and she was at the mercy of Sam’s naïveté and whatever was wearing Dean’s face.

“Darcy!” Steve calls after her, but Darcy doesn’t have a moment to spare.

She burst through the door like her ass was on fire, stops dead under the Devil’s Trap above her entryway.

It’s Dean, leaning against the frame of her kitchen doorway. He has that same shit-eating grin, like he’s about to put her in a headlock and give her a noogie or something. The leather jacket is on, collar popped like always. He shifts, spreading his arms wide, like he was about to sacrifice himself for a hug and a chick flick moment.

It looks like Dean. Darcy wants to believe.

“Sam…” she whispers. “What did you do?”

“What?”

Dean, or the thing pretending to be him, falters. “Darce.” And, god, it’s the same voice, that low, questioning timbre. “Darcy, it’s me. It’s your brother, I swear.”

“My brother’s dead, you son of a bitch.”

Darcy lunges, but Sam wraps around her and yanks her back. “Darcy, it’s him, I promise!”

The thing wearing Dean’s face – demon, has to be, crawled out of Hell and put on her brother’s body – has the audacity to look hurt. Darcy struggles against Sam, manages to get the door clicked closed before Steve and Bucky can get through it. “Jarvis, lock it down!” she shouts. They can’t be there when a demon is wearing her brother’s face.

Darcy knocks her head back, catching Sam in the chin and loosening his grip enough that she can get away. He reaches for her again, but she drives her elbow into his stomach, nails him with a kick to the gut, sending him stumbling back into her kitchen table. He goes down, taking the entire cheap IKEA table and all its contents with him.

“Darce, it’s me,” Dean says, holds up both hands like he’s going for a peace offering.

There’s a knock, a shout at the door.

“Don’t come in!” Darcy yells, and lunges at the thing wearing her brother.

Dean catches her, dodges her strike, and sends her down with a not-so-gentle swipe. He pins her there, keeps his legs trapping hers and his hands holding hers to the floor.

“It’s me,” he says again. “I swear to God, it’s me.”

There’s a sudden rush of cold water over her and she splutters. Dean lets go of her, sitting up to look annoyed at Sam, who is standing with a half-empty jug of Darcy’s holy water in his hand. His skin wasn’t smoking, and his eyes weren’t turning to black.

“Oh God.” Darcy breathes. “Oh my God, _Dean_.”

There’s a splintering sound, and Dean scrambles to his feet just as the door is basically _halved_ , revealing two ready-to-fight super-soldiers.

“Wait!” Darcy shouts, follows it up with a cough as her chest aches from the night before. She stands between Sam and Dean, and Steve and Bucky, arms outstretched like she can stop the four of them from leaping into battle. Sam and Dean would surely lose, she knew. “It’s okay,” she says, looking between the four of them.

“We heard fighting,” Steve says by way of explanation, and then has the grace to glance at the door sheepishly. “…That was Bucky.”

“Doll, next time you’re trying to keep out a super-soldier, barricade the door. Don’t just lock it,” Bucky suggests helpfully, and Darcy wants to kiss and hit him all at once.

“Super-soldier?” Sam’s relaxed, rubbing his stomach.

“Yeah, um.” Darcy clears her throat. “Guys,” she says to Steve and Bucky, “these are my brothers, Sam and Dean. Dean, Sam, this is, uh. Steve and Bucky.”

“Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes?” Dean says, looking suitably impressed. “As in Captain America and his trusty sidekick?” He eyes Bucky suddenly. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

“Aren’t you?” Bucky replies, eyeing Dean with just as much distrust.

Sam holds out his hand, like a rapidly thrown olive branch. “Pleasure to meet you, Captain,” he says.

Steve, to Darcy’s relief, takes it. “And you. Darcy’s a hell of a girl. Bucky,” he says, pointedly. “Let’s let them catch up.”

“I’ll walk you out!” Darcy says quickly.

She and Steve practically frog-march Bucky out, halfway down the hall, past the broken door and nearly to the communal kitchen. Darcy breathes out a breath of… she’s not even sure, relief? Whatever it’s considered when someone breathes after a storm passes them over.

“We’ll fix the door,” Steve says apologetically.

“We’ll get Tony to get someone to fix the door,” Bucky corrects. He cards a hand through his hair, brushes it from his eyes. “You gonna be alright, doll?”

“I’m good,” Darcy says. “I’ll figure this out, figure out what… happened.” She sighs again.

“Word to the wise, honey,” Bucky says. “Might wanna change your shirt.”

It occurs to Darcy then that she’s standing in the hallway in a wet, light-gray shirt of Steve’s. Steve flushes a deep red, averting his eyes politely while Bucky just smirks.

“I’ll call you?” she offers. “When, you know. This blows over?”

Bucky nods, grins, and stands like he’s waiting for something, even as Steve starts to step away. And the thing is, Darcy _knows_ her brothers are watching, scrutinizing their every move, just as they always have been. So far this morning, though, Darcy’s been through some emotional trauma – she’s just not up for playing the secrets game anymore. So she meets Bucky’s grin, leans forward, and presses a kiss to his lips – gentle and suitable for polite company, but enough that she’ll shock her brothers. Then, she leans to Steve, who meets her halfway.

They part, Steve and Bucky for the elevator and Darcy back for her suite, where Dean and Sam are standing nonchalantly in the doorway, trying to look like they weren’t just watching her.

“Don’t talk to me for five minutes,” Darcy advises them when she strides through her doorway, going straight for her bedroom. Sam and Dean know her, as evidenced by the fact that they don’t speak to her as she goes past, don’t argue when she closes the door behind her.

She changes her shirt first, into something big and comfortable – Dean’s, she thinks wildly. Her head is reeling, her brother is _alive_ and _whole_ and she’s even relatively sure that it’s him and not some kind of illusion. She’s still waiting to wake up from this dream, and Darcy doesn’t know if she can _handle_ this. It’s everything she wants, but it’s still terrifying – how? Why? _When_?

Tears prick at her eyes – she hates that she cries when she gets overwhelmed, always afraid to seem weak in a field driven by “survival of the fittest” mentality. She fights them back, wipes them away on the back of her hand, and steels herself.

She opens the door and they’re hovering, because of course they are.

“What did you do?” she demands, standing in the doorway to her bedroom and eyes finding Sam’s. “What, did you finally find a crossroads demon that would make you a deal?” The tears spill over and just serve to piss her off – she doesn’t have time for them. “Am I gonna have to watch you die, too? Trapped in this fucking cycle of pain and sacrifice?”

“I didn’t do it, Darce,” Sam says quietly. “I swear, I didn’t do anything.”

“What, not happy to see me?” Dean’s tone is joking, but Darcy knows that Dean’s self-esteem is shit on the best of days. She feels a stab of guilt, knows that the words are probably hiding some true hurt.

“Of course I am,” she says. “I’m fucking thrilled, Dean, you have no idea how I’ve…” Darcy stops, lets it sink in that her brother is _alive_ , in front of her, smelling of gun oil and leather and looking at her with that strange mix of cocky and vulnerability. “God, I’ve missed you,” she says, throat thick, and wraps her arms around him, closes her eyes, and lets herself feel.

She pulls away after a moment, wipes her eyes again. Sam’s looking at them like a kid on the outside of a store display at Christmas, like he’s not sure if he’s allowed in or not. After a moment of indecision, Darcy pulls him into a quick hug as well, tries to will herself to forgive and forget.

“Come on,” she says when she pulls away. “I’ve got coffee.”

 

“You’re not going to believe it,” Dean says when they’ve got coffee, and they’re sitting in Darcy’s living room while Darcy attempts to sort through the ruins of her kitchen table.

“I live with superheroes,” Darcy says by way of explanation, digs her journal out of the rubble.

“About that,” Sam says. “Did you kiss Captain America goodbye?”

“And the Winter Soldier.” Darcy nods.

“That would be Bucky?” Dean asks, derision plain. Apparently he’s not over the fact that they got off on the wrong foot. “How’d he end up with that name?”

Darcy’s quiet for a moment, keeps her eyes on the mess in her kitchen. “He’s an ex-Russian assassin,” she finally says, bites the bullet and goes for it.

“You’re sleeping with an _assassin_?” Dean seems to be wavering between overprotective and disbelieving. “Darcy!”

“Dating him,” Darcy corrects. “And Captain America, too, don’t forget Steve.”

“Oh my god,” Dean groans. “I can’t beat them up.”

“Darcy, are you sure this is a good idea?” Sam gives her those puppy eyes, like he’s trying to convince her to break it off right then, when it’s just barely gotten started.

“Hey,” she snaps. “You have been back in my life for literally twenty minutes, don’t start with me.”

Silence follows her statement. Sam looks away from her, blows out a breath through his nose, nostrils flaring, bitchface in full force. Dean shifts his gaze between the two of them.

“This doesn’t seem that amicable to me, Sam,” Dean says pointedly.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Darcy says. “Like you always do, Dean. _How_?”

More silence.

“Please,” Darcy says quietly. “I need to know Sam didn’t-“

“I didn’t,” Sam snaps.

“He didn’t,” Dean confirms. He scrubs at the space between his eyes. “It was angels. An angel, specifically, name’s Castiel. He, uh… ‘gripped me tight and raised me from perdition.’”

Darcy stares at him, journal held in her hands. “Angels. Like… cute and fluffy, innocent beings? Or terrifying vengeance warriors of God?”

“Door number two,” Dean says.

“You’re shitting me.” Darcy swallows. “Dean, please tell me I don’t have to fight an angel.”

There’s silence.

“ _God damn it_ ,” she snarls.

Dean clears his throat. “There’s a little… situation.”


End file.
